


Pinpricks

by spensierata



Category: The X-Files
Genre: AU, Gen, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-05
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-27 05:12:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13873884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spensierata/pseuds/spensierata
Summary: AU, because the Van de kamps had wasted potential. It reminded me of another plot line with a lot of wasted potential.





	Pinpricks

She was four when she first learned how to sew. Her mom had taught her the basics, the back, whip and slip stitch so she could fix her toys herself when she wore out the seams. At first, she would prick her clumsy baby fingers and cry as her own blood bloomed and tainted her alabaster skin. She wasn’t afraid of needles, in the end, that was a twisted blessing, when They would stick them in her veins she remembered Sleeping Beauty, and how lucky she was to never have to wake. **  
**

That was the first story she ever told with fabric and thread, a dragon and a prince, a castle surrounded by thorns. He traced the seam of the princess’ honey coloured hair then stuffed the corner of the quilt into his toothless mouth. Her lover laughed and kissed her lips to stop her biting them.  _He’ll love it when he’s older._  He assured her, then kissed their son on his fair, downy head.  _He’ll love you._

A miracle that came out of the blue, star-smattered night of Nowhere, Wyoming, a Frankenstein of a doll in tow, stitched and mended as if by a little girl. Heavily and brutally scarred as his own face. His eyes gleamed like glassy charcoal buttons and she recognised him all the same.  _I have a favour to ask, Sam. I know that you don’t owe me any_. His voice cracked as it did when they were children, and she would tease him, and he would pull her hair. It wasn’t funny now. It wasn’t funny then when her father pulled her away to pull apart her mind.

She did owe him. Jeffrey had saved her once, when he helped her run, hid her with some nuns who taught her that scalpels and syringes and steady hands could heal instead of harm. So she mended habits for the nuns during the day to pay for classes in the night, and that’s where she met Jude. The patron saint of lost hope, lost causes, lost children. He found her, Hemming a veil over an open textbook. He picked up and studied her ruined hand, grinned, and told her with those stitches she’d be the best surgeon in the world. She made her own wedding dress and walked down the aisle alone.

Jeffrey had saved her twice when he handed her her son. William, he said, who had belonged to their brother. The one she couldn’t quite remember, yet she couldn’t quite forget.  _He still loves you, he would want you to be happy._ His words felt like air on an open wound. She sucked in a breath through gritted teeth and held it in her lungs.

Samantha gave him his middle name. Jackson; God has been gracious. She stitched the name into every pair of his jeans and mended them when he came home in tatters, saying he’d been out hunting bigfoot when his bloody nose told a whole other story. She stopped mending his jeans when he started tearing them up on purpose.  _The holes are what makes them cool,_   _Mom, you just don’t_   _understand_. And she didn’t understand. None of them could understand when he’d have nightmares and cry out for a mother that wasn’t her. The same way she would have nightmares, and cry out for a fox.

Her wayward child grew to have dark hair and forest green eyes like her, a curiosity towards the unknown, towards the stars, and both their elusive pasts. He tried to piece it together like a patchwork quilt, grew frustrated when the seams would tear. It chipped at her heart like when he would cry for milk she couldn’t give him. She often felt the blood red string which tied them tighten around her neck like a noose. But he had her wrapped around his little finger the moment he wrapped his little fingers around hers. The night before she died he found his fairy tale blanket, folded and forgotten in the back of his closet.  _There’s a story in that_  Samantha said, and promised to tell him about it one day. She ruffled his mop of hair and promised to cut that too. The end of his freckled nose scrunched up when he laughed. He smiled just like his father.


End file.
